One of the things the kids here love to do is bike. My favourite is seeing several 8-year-olds piled onto one motorcycle with no shoes on. Anyway, we finally got the kids some bikes. First we tried on helmets:

It almost fits!The weight of this almost pulled her over.

Nah, I’m just kidding. We got them regular bicycles, not motorbikes! The helmet was a friend’s who let the kids try it on. They looked like spacemen. Anyway, the bikes are nice. J’s is some kind of purple design, and B’s has superheroes. I know, I’m a good parent for knowing so much detail. But they went for their first ride today!

J showing off her new bike, especially the basket.B looking cool.J posing for the camera.B posing for the camera, with his “nice” face.Then his “silly” face.And now, biking!!

We headed up to the school playground so J could get in her required 30 minutes of swinging a day. Luckily our driveway is big enough that they can do a pretty good circuit without having to go into the street. Hopefully it will keep them busy for a few weeks.

In other news, we had a really big rain and windstorm the other day. We didn’t really notice at the time, but it caused a lot of damage. Several large trees came down in the neighbourhood and many cheaply built things were broken – like the fabric roof over the parking lot across the road from us. I think it quite literally blew away. We even had a little tree fall over in our yard. We haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. But the big difference here is the way they deal with this kind of damage. For example:

This tree crushed a few fences and blocked the road for over a day.

The tree is still there, several days later. Someone kind of hacked it up and moved it to the side, but I don’t know what happens now. I guess it just sits there until someone decides they want the wood? Another tree in the area didn’t fall but became unstable, and we saw a group of guys cutting it down today. And by a group of guys, I mean one guy literally climbing up into it (with no safety gear) and cutting the branches down while someone tried to guide the branches with some ropes. I suspect a lot of people get crushed by stuff here.

I’ll leave you with a fantastic picture I just got today – last weekend, while swimming with friends, we borrowed their underwater camera and LittleB and I played with it a bit. Here he is, with his new goggles, jumping into the water with me. Best picture ever!